7r !f ^ 



S E R M o i^r s 

ON THE ' ^ , 

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



BY 



R. BETHELL CLAXTON, D. D., 

RECTOR OF ST. LUKe'S CHURCH, ROCHESTER, N. V. 



P 11 1 L A D E L P 11 1 A : 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1 S C, ;"), 



SERMONS 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 



DELIVERED IN 



^t. f iih's Chtrcl], ll0tl]tsttr, i. |., 



"SVe cln.es day, Apx-il IQtli, 

AND ON 

Sunday, April S3d, 1865. 






BY 



R. BET HELL C LAX TON, D. D., 




PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

18 5. 



."8 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Rochester, April 25, 1805. 
Rev. E. BETHELL CLAXTON, D.D. 

Dear Sir, — 

Encouraged in the belief that your recent Diecourses, 
delivered in St. Luke's Church, on the 19th and 23d inst., 
upon the death of the late lamented President of the United 
Slates, should receive a more extended circulation than can be 
expected by mere oral deliver}^ from the pulpit, we take the 
liberty to request copies thereof for publication ; as well to 
secure the end above indicated as to perpetuate in the mind of 
every lover of his country into whose hands they may fall, the 
just and patriotic sentiments so eloquently spoken by you on 
each occasion. 

Very truly yours, 
(Signed) Alfred Ely, Fred. A. Whittlesey, 

E. Darwin Smith, Wm. Pitkin, 
Wm. Brewster, E. R. Hammatt, 
Thos. C. Montgomery. 



REPLY. 



Mv DEAR Friends, — 

I CHEERFULLY acquiesce in your wish that my recent 
Discourses may be published ; although conscious that their 
chief interest will be found in their solemn themes, and in the 
aft'ectiug circumstances under which they were delivered. 

Sharing with you the earnest desire that a true patriotism 
may be more and more cherished as a Christian principle, 
I am faithfully. 

Your friend and pastor, 
(Signed) R. B. CLAXTOX. 

To the Hon. Alfred Ely, 

E. Darwin Smith, and other.<. 



S E EM O I^ 



April 19th, at Noon, 



THE DAT AND THE HOUR APPOINTED FOR THE 



OBSEQUIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



IN WASHINGTON. 



SERMON. 



Alas! for that clay is great, so that none is like it: it is even 
the time of Jacob's trouble ; but he shall be saved out of it. 
Jer. XXX. 7. 

What day, my hearers, in all our country's ex- 
perience, has there been like this day? Our fathers 
have told us, and we have read in history — yes, some 
here present may remember what they themselves 
knew and felt — how throughout this land, five and 
sixty years ago, the whole people "mourned with a 
great and sore lamentation" when the tidings came 
that the Father of his Country had lain down to 
sleep the sleep of death ! But that day of sorrow 
was not like this ! 

Many of us can call to mind the day, five and 
twenty years ago, when the illustrious Harrison, 
having sat for one short month in the chair of Su- 
preme Magistracy, was called suddenly away, and 
the startled Nation wept and bewailed his loss with 
a sorrow for which there was cause far deeper than 
the nation then knew or even conjectured. But 
that day was not like this ! 

Still more of us there may be who, looking back 
through fifteen years, can recall with what true. 



8 



though unavailing grief, our people humbled them- 
selves before God, Avhen the heroic Zachary Taylor, 
his term of Presidency cut short, passed to the 
shadowy regions of the unseen world. Then tears 
"were shed, many and bitter tears; then the nation 
draped itself in the insignia of mourning; then sor- 
row seemed to fill all hearts. But that day was not 
like this ! 

Four short years ago (exactly four years last 
Saturday) all loyal hearts throughout our land were 
startled, were thrilled, were almost maddened with 
the tidings that armed treason had humiliated the 
ever-honored banner of the Republic; and that the 
foul insignia of rebellion had taken its place over the 
walls of Sumter. On that day the voice of Abraham 
Lincoln went forth to our people, with Heaven-sanc- 
tioned authority, bidding the nation rise to defend 
its own life against the parricidal blows of traitors. 
That day was "great;" but it was not like this! 

Four years this day patriot soldiers hastening to 
the protection of the national capital were murdered 
by traitorous hands in the streets of Baltimore. The 
deed of shame and blood was heard of all over the 
land ere that day's sun went down. It was a day 
sacred to memories of the first sacrifice of precious 
life on the Altar of Liberty as the American colonies 
were struggling for birth as a free nation: the day 
on which was shed the first blood wherewith our 
count jy's independence was baptized. It was a time 



9 



of trouble, that day of 1861, as was that of 1775. 
But it was not like this! 

Ever and anon since then the Republic has seen 
dark days! After many a battle in which the hosts 
of conspiracy and rebellion were for the time tri- 
umphant; after many an unveiling of depths of in- 
trigue and of faction wherein the emissaries and 
abettors of secession, right in the heart of the loyal 
States, hoped to bury the nation's cause ; under 
many a report that seemed too well founded, promis- 
ing the open help of our country's foes abroad to the 
enemy that was of our own household; often and 
often, there were days of gloom, through whose 
clouds none but the clear eye of faith in the right 
could catch even a glimpse of Heaven's favor. But 
of all those days of trouble there was none like this ! 

When Washington went home to the skies, he had 
fulfilled to the utmost his country's hopes and even 
desires; and amid the plaudits of a grateful people 
and of an admiring world he passed out of human 
sight at the call of Heaven's King, his death-bed 
cheered and soothed, and its pains alleviated by all 
that highest skill and warmest love could minister. 
When President Harrison and General Taylor laid 
aside their robes of office, it was, in like manner, at 
the inevitable summons of the Great Ruler of all 
earth's rulers, and in the fullness of their years and 
honors; and for them the nation's universal sorrow 
was not tinged with any shade of darkening passion ; 



10 



was not imbittered by the thought that the nation's 
oncinics Averc tlie instrnmonts of the heavy allliction. 

Jiiit now that one is gone who had been treading 
in the footsteps of the wise and of the good who had 
walked the paths of magistracy before him ; who, in 
the clearer light that the rising and ever-ascending 
sun of freedom sheds on human rights and human 
duties, could not l)ut see more than had been seen 
by the earlier sages of the Republic; one wdio had 
struggled successfully with difficulties such as made 
all the labors of his predecessors seem easy in com- 
parison, — now, just when he seemed about to lead 
the nation out of night into day, out of storm into 
calm, out of grief into joy, out of war into peace, out 
of strife into love, that he should die, should die 
such a death; that ''the strong staff" on which the 
nation leaned should be thus broken; that " the 
beautiful rod," to which the world was looking with 
daily increasing reverence and admiration, should be 
thus despoiled, — "this is a lamentation and shall be 
a lamentation!" 

The ship of state had been for four long years 
tossed with such tempests as it never before had 
known. For four long years armed mutiny, power- 
ful in the advantages which conspiracy and robbery 
and perjury had given it in the outset, had resisted 
all Jittempts to subdue and cast it out. l>ut just as 
quiet seas are almost gained, just as law and justice 
and truth have proved themselves victors over wrong. 



11 



in an unlooked for moment, the wise and patient 
commander falls before an assassin's blow! What 
day has there been like this? 

What can I say to you, my beloved people and 
Christian friends, that will be becoming this place 
and this occasion, and that will awaken in you or 
intensify at all a sense of your own and of our 
nation's loss? 

Most of you, I doubt not, understand the char- 
acter of Abraham Lincoln as well as I do; many of 
you, it may be, much better than I do. In this I 
think all will agree with me: that his was a char- 
acter of singular transparency. In his position it 
was of course often necessary that his plans and 
purposes should be veiled, at least for a time. He 
was, when need be, wisely reticent; and yet when 
the necessity for concealment had passed, his whole 
action was seen to be consistent with the principles 
and the policy that professedly he upheld. It was 
altogether foreign to his nature to stoop to the low 
arts of political trickery. The sinuous j)aths by 
which so many in public station have sought to 
reach their objects were his aversion and contempt. 
And there was in him a remarkable simplicity of 
taste as to all that concerned his manner of living. 
There was nothing about him that savored of osten- 
tation or a vain fondness of display. Used in his 
earlier life to toil, and often to hardships and priva- 
tions, he retained in his high position a perfect 



12 



sympatliy with the classes and conditions in life 
above wliich he had been elevated. lie had been 
trained in a rough school; but the lessons he had 
learned were of great practical worth. Especially 
was he imbued with a love of those great principles 
which underlie our whole fabric of government. 
The equality of all men before the law, which 
stands in the forefront of the principles enunciated 
in the Declaration of Independence, was to him no 
cold, lifeless theory, but a warm, cherished reality. 
It was upon this principle he stood, before his elec- 
tion to the Presidency, when combating that gigantic 
system of oppression and cruelty, for which some of 
the fathers of the Republic asked a temporary toler- 
ation, but which an overbearing oligarchy in the 
Southern States were more and more determined 
to use for their own aggrandizement; which they 
w^ere resolved to make perpetual and universal in 
the land. It was from his keen sense of right that 
he hated and sought to eradicate that monstrous 
wrong; and it was also from his kindly and gener- 
ous sympathy with the down-trodden, from his love 
of his fellow-men in the lofty spirit of Christian 
philanthropy, that he felt it to be a glorious and a 
blessed result if he could be, in any rightful way, 
the instrument of its removal. lie was, indeed, as 
he ought to have been, exceedingly unwilling to 
inllict injury in the endeavor to redress and remove 
an injury, to do a wrong in order to establish the 



13 



Right. He was duly mindful of his obligations so 
to respect the Constitution of the- land as to make 
it answer the great ends for which it had been 
adopted. 

And so, firmly and steadily, to some it seemed 
too rapidly, to others too slowly, he advanced in 
the establishment of those principles in his admin- 
istration of the government intrusted to him. His 
course, like that of some planet in the skies, seemed 
to many an observer unsteady and erratic; but like 
that planet, his progress was in a fixed orbit around 
the central Sun of Truth. The path of the planet, 
seen from a world whose complex motions, on its 
axis and around the sun, give seeming motion to 
the heavenly bodies, may appear to be eccentric 
and fitful; and so, amid the daily shifting scenes of 
our political affairs, especially in times of such fear- 
ful commotion as those through which we have been 
passing, it is no wonder that men have been uncer- 
tain at times in which direction the public policy 
was tending. For a like reason there has been 
in many minds an uncertainty whether the Presi- 
dent sought to be a leader or a follower of public 
opinion. Yet if I have not misjudged, it was to 
his eminent prudence that this uncertainty was due. 
He led, generally, even when he seemed to follow; 
but he took care that his public measures were not 
so much in advance of the sentiments of the great 
mass of thoughtful lovers of their country, as to part 



u 



company with them and thus lose their indispens- 
able sujDport. 

For no trait of character was he more conspicuous 
than for the absence of all animosity, even toward 
those who had most deeply wronged and maligned 
him. Macaulay, in a most unjust criticism on Arch- 
bishop Cranmer, describes that gentle Christian pre- 
late as "a placable enemy;" and never, I think, has 
the country had a statesman to whom could more 
fittingly apply this phrase than to the lamented 
dead. His tenderness to all was almost womanly; 
his readiness to show mercy was almost Divine. 

Nor will any one here deny him one other lofty 
attribute : an intense love of his country. It was 
not wordy but hearty; not sentimental but practical. 
He knew — what the unprincipled traitors of the 
South never knew — the meaning of love of country, 
of true patriotism. It was no narrow State pride, 
no sectional arrogance, no boastful spirit of exclusive- 
ness, but a love which, in its expansion embracing 
man as man, men as men, intensified itself in its 
devotion to the land which was his home, the people 
who were his countrymen, the Government and the 
Constitution to which he owed and rendered his 
supreme allegiance. 

I wish I could speak as I would of his religious 
character, as known and manifest to all. I could 
wish that he, like some of his illustrious predeces- 
sors, had been openly identified with tlie Church of 



15 



the Lord Jesus Christ. That he had deep religious 
convictions, that he respected and reverenced the 
Christian religion, that he sought to shape his life, 
public and private, by the precepts and the truths 
of Christ's gospel, we have good reason to believe. 
I could wish — oh, how earnestly ! — that he had seen, 
in what I believe to be the light of Christian expe- 
rience, the evils that, so far as I have known, are 
inseparable from the theater, and that make that 
hot-bed of immorality forbidden ground to every 
consistent disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. I could 
wish — oh, how earnestly! — that his religious culture 
had been such as would have led him to unite with 
the great mass of Christian people in regarding the 
anniversary of the day whereon Jesus died for sin- 
ners as a time for devotion to serious thought, and 
not for attendance on public spectacles. But in this 
I judge him not. He to whom we are to give 
account, although he cannot pardon unrepented and 
willful sin, is very merciful and plenteous in good- 
ness; ready to save every sincere believer in Christ's 
blessed gospel. 

There is much that I would gladly say of our la- 
mented President, for which there is now no time. I 
hope, if spared until Sunday evening next, to examine 
at some length the religious aspect of this event which 
the nation mourns, and to draw from it those practical 
lessons which it so impressively teaches. Let us, for 



IG 



a few minutes, go in thought to tlie mansion in the 
nation's capital, in which, at this hour, lie the remains 
of the illustrious, lamented dead. There, in the pres- 
ence of those highest in office in the Republic, in the 
presence of those bound to him who has gone by dear- 
est ties, are now performing those sad offices which 
precede the interment of his mortal body. The form 
that last Meek towered high above tlie multitude now 
lies prostrate in the embrace of death. The eyes that 
beamed so kindly are sealed in a sleep from which man 
can never waken him who slumbers there. The genial 
smile plays no longer on the now pallid cheek. The 
voice, whose public utterances were heard with inter- 
est throughout the civilized world, is hushed in un- 
broken silence. The heart, that beat so warmly re- 
sponsive to all that is just and right and honorable 
and benevolent, is now still. The funeral solemnities 
there are but the central services around which, at 
widening distances, cluster like solemnities, following 
the sun's westward course as the hours march on, from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. And never, never, 
never was there such a funeral as Abraham Lincoln's! 
Never has a death in our land caused so many so 
sincerely and so deeply to mourn. Never, it seems to 
me, has a nation had such cause to mourn a ruler's 
death. He was so loved and so deservedly loved; he 
had done his country such service, and he had it in 
liis heart and in his power to do so uuieh more; he 
was, to all human appearance, so indispensably needed 



17 



for the settlement of the perplexing questions that 
attend the reconstruction of our National Govern- 
ment. 

And then the manner and the instrument of his 
death! How can I speak of it? Such a crime as 
makes the nation stand aghast with horror! One that 
kindles at every thought a just resentment; an irre- 
pressible indignation! What a deed of infamy! of 
fiendish malice ! of hell-born hate ! a parricide for 
whose baseness, I was about to say, we search history 
in vain to find a counterpart ! But no ! whose base- 
ness, the natural outgrowth of treason, can only be 
exceeded by the depravity of that man or that 
woman whose words or looks ex]3ress — whose cruel 
heart conceives — a thought of pleasure, of satisfac- 
tion, in its terrible result. This gigantic war, in its 
record shows a fearful catalogue of crimes that, from 
the first overt act of treason, have ever and anon 
made humanity shudder! Deeds so inhuman that 
none but men who had given Satan full possession of 
their souls could possibly have performed them. The 
men who were guilty of the massacre at Lawrence 
and at Fort Pillow — the men who treated with more 
than savage barbarity our poor prisoners in Richmond, 
at Andersonville, and Salisbury, — these are the men 
who, first lifting their hand against their country's 
sacred flag, have gone down from depth to depth of 
wickedness until by their last foul blow they have 
exceeded all the wickedness of their previous career. 



18 



lint thank Cod the Nation did not porish when its 
ilhistiious Chief Magistrate lell under the assassin's 
hand! 

When on that Good Friday evening, eighteen hun- 
dred and thirty-six years ago, the enemies of Christ 
desired to make certain the suppression of the faith 
of the Crucified, they made sure (as they thought) 
the sepulcher in which He lay, "sealing the stone 
and setting a watch." But the death of Jesus, not- 
withstanding all they could do, M\as followed by His 
resurrection; and thenceforward His gospel went 
forth everywhere, "conquering and to conquer." 

The conspirators in the national capital, last Good 
Friday evening, purposed, by slaying the President 
and the Heads of the Government, to inaugurate 
anarchy and make sure work of destroying the Na- 
tion's life. But I need not tell 3^ou how signally they 
failed ! God be thanked for what Abraham Lincoln 
has done for the American people ! That, his enemies 
cannot undo! God be thanked for the evidence al- 
ready so clear that out of his lamented death the 
Nation will draw new life; will have ever}' high and 
holy purpose quickened; will be made more firm, 
more resolved, more united for the right! A costly 
sacrifice has been given. God will not let it be given 
in vain. 

"It is even the time of Jacob's trouble; Init he 
shall be saved out of it." 



19 

High hopes, that burned like stars sublime, 

Go down the heavens of Freedom ; 
And true hearts perish in the time 

We bitterliest need them ! 
But, never sit we down and say. 

There's nothing left but sorrow, — 
We walk the wilderness to-day, 

The promised land to-morrow. 

Our birds of song are silent now, 

There are no flowers blooming; 
Yet life beats in the frozen bough, 

And Freedom's Spring is coming ! 
And Freedom's tide comes up alway, 

Though we may stand in sorrow; 
And our good bark, aground to-day, 

Shall float again to-morrow. 

Through all the long, dark nights of years, 

The people's cry ascendeth. 
And Earth is wet with blood and tears; 

But our meek sufferance endeth ! 
The few shall not forever sway. 

The many toil in sorrow ; 
The Powers of Earth are strong to-day, 

But Heaven shall rule to-morrow. 



20 

Though hearts brood o'er tlie past, our eyes 

With smilinfr features glisten ; 
For, lo ! our day bursts up the skies — 

Lean out your souls, and listen ! 
The world rolls Freedom's radiant way, 

And ripens with her sorrow; 
Keep heart ! who bears the cross to-day, 

Shall wear the crown to-morrow. 

Build up heroic lives, and all 

Be like a sheathen saber. 
Ready to flash out at God's call, 

0, chivalry of labor ! 
Triumph and toil are twins, and aye, 

Joy suns the cloud of sorrow; 
And 'tis the martyrdom to-day 

Brings victory to-morrow. 



S E E M O N" 



ON THE ETENIN'G OF 



THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 



April 33d, 1865. 



SERMON. 



When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the 
world will learn righteousness. Isaiah, xxvi. 9. 

The prophet, in this chapter, gives the church a 
psahn to be sung by the people of God after their 
return from the captivity in Babylon, which he had 
foreseen and foretold: and we can well imagine with 
what reverent hope and joy Jeremiah and Ezekiel 
and Daniel, prophets themselves, sat down by the 
rivers in the land of their exile, and, in the darkest 
days of their guilty nation, found comfort here. 
Their trials and afflictions might be ever so griev- 
ous, but they should have an end. The tribes of 
Israel were not only to be restored to their country 
and their homes, but they were also to be made 
wiser and better by what they had suffered. "In that 
day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah: 
We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint 
for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that 
the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may 
enter in." '=' * * "In the way of Thy judgments, 
Lord, have we waited for Thee; the desire of our 

(23) 



24 



soul is to Thy name, and to the remembrance of 
Thei'. With my soul have I desired Thee in the 
iii^ht; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek 
Thee early: for when Thy judgments are in the 
earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn right- 
eousness." 

We, as a people, dear hearers, have had during 
the last four years a solemn and painful experience 
of the judgments of God on our land. Such aillic- 
tions as we have endured, the word of God expressly 
teaches us'=' to regard in this light. They are ad- 
monitions to us that God had and still hath a con- 
troversy with our nation. The prophet, from whose 
words our text is taken, elsewhere says : " The Lord 
is our Judge; the Lord is our Lawgiver; the Lord is 
our King;" most wonderfully discriminating in his 
distribution of the powers of government into ju- 
dicial, legislative, and executive ; and pointing to 
the Triune Jehovah, as Himself fulfdling for His 
people all these functions. Our Congress, our Courts, 
our Presidents and Governors, all owe to Him su- 
preme allegiance. Their statutes, their decisions, 
their ofiicial acts of authority are all subject to His 
revision, to His approval or disapproval. And so 
are all those expressions of will and of purpose that 
come from the peo})le, whose servants Presidents, 
Judges, Legislators represent themselves to be. Our 

* Ezckicl, xiv. 21 ; Leviticus, xxvi. 25. 



25 



rulers may be in theory (and to some extent in 
practice) the servants of the people; but rulers and 
people are alike servants of Him who is over all. 
If we observe His will, we receive, as a people, His 
favor. If we violate and contemn His will, we are 
liable either to the chastenings of His love for our 
correction and reform, or to the outpourings of His 
wrath for retribution, and, if we turn not, for our 
destruction. 

It is in this light that, as a Christian pastor, I feel 
compelled to view the whole civil war through which 
we have been passing, and especially that most griev- 
ous national affliction under which the heart of the 
American people now bleeds. There is an important 
sense in which we are to view this war and this assas- 
sination of our loved Chief Magistrate, as a Judgment 
from God. Had our national policy been right, and 
had our national character been conformed to God's 
will, I am sure that the war would never have taken 
place. Had not the sins committed by our people 
displeased Him, who is our Judge, our Lawgiver, and 
our King, that awful deed of blood would never have 
stained our land. While, as to the war itself, I have 
no shadow of suspicion that our Government was not 
authorized to resist and subdue armed treason by 
force; while it was the bounden duty of the Govern- 
ment to wield the Divinely-given Sword of Magis- 
tracy to defend the nation's life; while the crime 
of making unlawful war rests wholly on its guilty 



26 



authors in our Southern States and their abettors 
in the North, — yet it is no less true that the sins 
of the whole people, North and South, brought upon 
us this terrible evil. While the victims of the re- 
bellion have included in their numbers thousands 
from among the best, the wisest, the noblest of our citi- 
zens, men whose conspicuous virtue was seen in their 
willing offering of their own lives on their country's 
altar; while among the impoverished and the heart- 
broken may have been those who for years had been 
weeping in the bitterness of their souls over the sins, 
public and private, by which Heaven's King was 
every day provoked, their death, their impoverish- 
ment, their bereavement, was nevertheless God's 
judgment on our guilty land. 

So when by the last fearful deed, whose atrocity 
exceeded all that had gone before in treason's shame- 
ful career, he was taken whom our country so loved, 
so honored, so trusted, so relied on, it was God's 
judgment; not on the nation's President, but on the 
people whom he so wisely ruled in the fear of God: 
a judgment, I devoutly trust, not in wrath, but in 
mercy. When death removes the parent, it is the 
family that is chastened. When God, by Avhatever 
instrument, takes away our chosen ruler, in an hour 
ill which he seemed most needful, lie speaks in tones 
of solemn admonition and rebuke to the nation. May 
we hear the rod and Him who hath appointed it. 

It is the intention of these jiulgnients, the prophet 



27 



tells us, that the world should " learn righteousness," 
and we, the people of this land, as most nearly in- 
terested, should be most of all anxious to learn. 
I regard this event, then, as calling on us — 
I. To a careful scrutiny into our personal and 
national sins. Time would utterly fail me to-night, 
were I to attempt to follow up the fearful catalogue 
that might be made of offenses whereby our Heav- 
enly Ruler is every day defied. But there are some 
forms of wrong-doing exceedingly prominent. Fore- 
most among these is that to which our late beloved 
President so touchingly refers in his last brief Inau- 
o'ural : that sin in the interest of which the rebel- 
lion began ; that sin, for his manly abhorrence of 
which our President was so intensely hated, so cruelly 
maligned, — the sin of African slavery. 

It is not of slavery as a political system, but as 
a moral evil, that I here and now speak, as I have 
spoken before in this place; and in that aspect I 
would here confess, as a part of my own dereliction, 
that until the rebellion unsealed my lips, I had never 
spoken concerning it as freely and as fully as I ought. 
I used to excuse myself by saying it was not a na- 
tional, but a local, sectional sin. But when the at- 
tempt was made to take the nation's life, I began 
(as did thousands of others) to realize that the nation 
is, in an important sense, a unit; and that the whole 
could not rid itself of responsibility for the wrong- 
doing of one of its parts ; and that a failure on the 



28 



part of the pulpit to speak, was living a tacit ap- 
proval to the evil. I used to say to myself, that I 
feared I mi<rht do more harm than good by meddling 
at all with the subject; but the advocates of the 
wrong, not satisfied with silence, demanded of tlie 
whole nation, and the whole church, an indorsement 
of that wrong. The courts, including the Supreme 
Court, were compelled by Southern politicians, before 
the rel)ellion began, to nationalize the iniquity; and 
THKN God's judgment came to reverse the unjust de- 
cision. After four years of most painful discipline, 
the nation, by its highest legislature, and with the 
approval of the Executive, is attempting to make its 
fundamental law, the Constitution, speak out the 
condemnation of slavery, which the national con- 
science demanded. But even yet there could be 
found men, parties, legislatures that would hesitate 
and refuse to give constitutional validity to that 
condemnation. Then came what I cannot but re- 
gard as a fresh and more fearful judgment; not on 
the individual who fell by the assassin's hand, but on 
the nation. The voice of that judgment, in this re- 
spect, sounds distinctly in my ear. It says. If any- 
thing is wanting to convince the honest portion of 
the American people what the true character of 
slavery is, here is the proof. That rhapsod}- of the 
iiiurdcnT, which the press has given us this last 
week, shows, among other things, what are the 
legitimate fruits of that system : its inevitable ten- 



29 



dency to make men call evil good, and good evil; 
to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. It 
is enough to make every man, who has hesitated 
hitherto, say slavery has attempted to take the life 
of the nation; it has taken the life of Abraham 
Lincoln, and slavery must, shall surely die! That 
is, in one aspect, the righteousness which this judg- 
ment was intended to teach; and which our whole 
people must learn, or be prepared for further, if pos- 
sible, heavier chastenings from the hand of Him, 
the Maker of all ; before whom the rich and the poor, 
the bond and the free, the master and the servant, 
stand on one common level. As to this we must 
say, with the prophet (Lam. iii. 40), "Let us search 
and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let 
us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the 
heavens. We have transgressed and have rebelled: 
thou hast not pardoned." * * * " The joy of our 
heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. 
The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us, 
that we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; 
for these things our eyes are dim." 

II. Of other public national sins I will not attempt 
now to speak; but there are two or three forms of 
flagrant transgression which, I conscientiously believe, 
are increasing in our land in frightful rapidity, and 
for which, so common are they becoming, we have 
reason to expect especial judgments from God. 

One of these is the sin of drunkenness. It is a sin 



30 



Avliicli men are very ready to palliate and excuse, but 
which CJod loathes. The very mercies that God has 
bestowed on us during this terrible war have been 
perverted into occasions for this sin. Our press (I 
speak not of all, but of many of our papers), just 
after the news came that Richmond had fallen, — and 
still more when the rebel chief, Robert E. Lee, sur- 
rendered, — encouraged and applauded drunkenness as 
a proper expression of popular joy. In ri1)ald rhyme 
— that, I would fain hope, meant not what it said — it 
intimated that he who would not thus imbrute him- 
self was wanting in patriotism! It spoke flippantly 
of the many whose conviviality in the excitement of 
these happy tidings overflowed into intemperance; 
and, as I noticed in one item, numbered so man}' 
thousand "inaugurations" as having taken place in 
one of our w^estern cities, on receipt of the news: thus 
sporting with the national shame, like fools making a 
mock at sin. My dear friends, a nation of drunkards 
can never be a free nation; and our victories will be 
dearly bought indeed, if, beyond the cost in precious 
lives of our heroic soldiers, they make drunkards of 
our young men. The assassin who took from us our 
President wms not only a Hmatical advocate of shiAery, 
but also a libertine and a drunkai'd; and in his deadly 
work a kind ))ut just Providence bids us see and re- 
pent of this our sinfulness. He bids every drunkard 
in tlie land say, "I am helping not only to ruin my- 
self, bodv and soul, but also to brin^r down God's 



31 



displeasure and His judgments on my country! I am 
an Achan among the hosts of Israel. I am, practi- 
cally, whatever my intent, my country's foe." 

Of profanity, of licentiousness, of gambling, of Sab- 
bath-breaking, of dishonesty, of avarice, of greed, 
like things may be as truly said. It was the aggre- 
gate of the offenses of individuals in Sodom and Go- 
morrah that brought down on these cities a deluge of 
fire; and all through the world, God, the Searcher of 
hearts and the Omniscient Witness, is scanning na- 
tional character, not only by the course of public 
policy, but also by the principles, the characters of 
the mass of the individuals of which the nation con- 
sists. Now I do not hesitate to say, as of drunkenness 
so of the other evils just named, that they have been 
largely and rapidly increasing among us during the 
past few years; and, as to them, we may well hear 
the prophet's words: "Shall I not visit for these 
things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged 
on such a nation as this?" 

III. This judgment, it seems to me, is meant to 
teach us to view treason with deeper detestation than 
we have ever yet felt for that crime of crimes. A 
few in every community have, from the beginning 
of the rebellion, characterized in fitting terms this 
offense against God and man; but even after all the 
revelations made of its real enormity, by the misery it 
has caused, by the blood it has shed, by the homes it 

3 



32 



has made desolate, by the burdens it has brought on 
this afflicted nation, even now there are in ahnost every 
community some who can think and (if they dare) 
speak Hghtly of this wickedness. With a morbid 
sentimentaUty that assumes the cloak of Christian 
forbearance and forgiveness, they have plead, not only 
for the misguided masses who were involved in this 
rebellion, but for their leaders, who, moved by ambi- 
tion and by greed, violated not only their common 
obligations, but their solemn, oftrrepeated oaths of 
fidelity to the Constitution and the Government of 
these United States : for men who were, many of 
them, fed and clothed and educated at the nation's 
expense; for men who had gained all that they had 
of wealth, of reputation, of influence, under the 
nation's fostering care; for these men, avIio, through 
perjury and craft and dishonesty and dishonor, 
launched the nation into this sea of trouble and of 
blood, — for these men apologists have ventured to 
speak with bated breath, as though their ofiense were 
some venial indiscretion of excitable temperaments. 
It was not enough that all along through the course of 
this war bad faith, and indescribable cruelty to pris- 
oners, and tortures inflicted by fanatical officers on 
Union-loving citizens of the South, had brought upon 
the rebel authorities the execrations of almost all who 
love the right and feel for human woes; it needed 
this last great crime to bring a unanimous verdict 
from the impaneled jury of the whole honest people 



33 



of the land, pronouncing on treason and on traitors a 
deserved doom. It needed this judgment to make all 
right-minded men be of one mind concerning this crime 
and its promoters, and to secure the vindication of 
law, of government, of order, by making it impossible 
for the leaders of the rebellion to escape, by our con- 
sent or our connivance, the punishment they have so 
richly deserved. Upon the hand of every one of these 
leaders was already the blood of hundreds of thou- 
sands of their slaughtered countrymen ; now the 
deeper, darker, more ineffaceable stain of the blood 
of Abraham Lincoln makes it impossible that any one 
of them should ever be again permitted to stand, 
honored and honorable, before the American people. 

IV. This judgment, it seems to me, is meant to 
teach us more impressively than ever our dependence 
upon God. Its voice is, "Cease ye from man whose 
breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be ac- 
counted of?" It is natural to man — and not at all 
peculiar to the American people — to indulge in what 
has been called "Hero worship." We are all apt so to 
magnif}^ the instruments by which blessings are con- 
ferred as to be forgetful of their real Giver, to whom 
belongs all the glory. It is well for us to value and 
to honor those who are public benefactors. We can 
scarcely appreciate too highly the worth of such a man 
as our late President ; but while loving and praising 
him, we must much more love and thank Him, the 
Source of all good, whose gift to our nation our Presi- 



34 



dent Avas. It was perhaps needful for us to be made 
t<j realize, more impressively than we ever did or could 
before, how frail and uncertain our dependence on man 
must ever ]ye. Our Supreme Ruler must Ix; a ruler 
that ever liveth; one "in whom is no varialjleness, 
neither shadow of tuniiiiii. " We must feel that it is 
lie in Avhose hands we and all the interests of our 
nation are ; and trusting in Him, we shall not be con- 
founded. There are about us and among us on this 
earth wicked men who are ready at any moment to 
injure and destroy us and our country for their own 
base and selfish ends; but above them all, we and our 
nation have a Protector, who says to all wickedness, 
" Thus ffir and no farther;" who makes the very wrath 
of man to praise Him; who has promised that the "re- 
mainder of wrath He will restrain." Humanly speak- 
ing, all that is good and desirable is at every moment 
in the power of the wicked; but, thank God, neither 
the malice of men nor that of devils can hurt a child 
of God, nor overturn Messiah's kingdom in the world, 
nor go a hair's breadtli beyond that which, in wisdom 
and mercy, is permitted. This, then, is a part of the 
righteousness we are to learn from God's judgments 
— to depend on God, not on man. 

V. Another thought I must briefly indicate. From 
this judgment of God on our land, we may learn that 
high place and wide -swaying power are of little 
worth as the prizes of human ambition. How was 
our country moved, less than six months ago, by the 



35 



question put to millions of our citizens, Whom do 
you wish to have as 3'our President? Had Abraham 
Lincoln sought that place only through ambitious 
aspirings, how utterly would his hopes have failed, 
even in the moment of their seeming fruition! 

" Life's loftiest stage is a small eminence, 
Inch high the grave above, that home of man 
Where dwells the multitude." 

The desire to rule mu}^ be a perfectly lawful mo- 
tive ; if it be combined with a sincere regard to 
justice and truth, and to the best interests of those 
over whom authority is sought. He who is qualified 
for high ofRce, and faithfully discharges his duty 
therein, may challenge justly the esteem and grate- 
ful love of his constituents. But power, honor, fame, 
wealth, influence may be dearly bought, if desired 
and procured as ends, not means to the good of 
others. 

" The glories of our mortal state 

Are shadows, not substantial things; 
There is no armor against fate : 
Death lays his icy hand on kings. 
Scepter and crown 
Must tumble down. 
And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade." 

VI. Once more, God would have us learn by this 
judgment to abate the rancor of political animosity 



36 



niul tlie severity of lunguage too often employed, 
orally and by the press, in censuring our public men. 
If speakers and writers would but think of the living 
while they live, as they would speak of them when 
dead, they would have fjxr less to regret in reviewing 
the past. Men may speak freely of those in official 
station, but they should speak more kindly than 
they usually do: and above all, they should speak 
truly. Especially should they take care lest by 
familiarizing the minds of the excitable with violent 
charges and false denunciations, they prompt some 
dark spirit to a deed of everlasting infamy, such as 
that which has clothed our country in mourning. 
Many a citizen of the Republic has refused to per- 
mit his name to be used as a candidate for an office 
which he might have filled with advantage to the 
community or to the nation, simply from his dread 
of the almost inevitable detraction and insult and 
calumny to which in his candidacy or in his office 
he would be exposed. The lihcrf// of the press must 
indeed be carefully guarded. The licentiousness of 
the press should be as carefully curbed, if not by the 
penalties of law, at least by the righteous indignation 
of those who prize free institutions. 

My dear hearers, it belongs to each one of us to 
take home to himself the painful lessun that God is 
teaching us by the judgments through which we 
have been passing, and which ma}- not as soon as 
we hope come entirely to an end! Our hearts' Ian- 



37 



guage should be that of the prophet: "Come and let 
us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn and He 
will heal us ! He hath smitten and He will bind 
us up." 

There are pleasing tokens that such will be the 
course of at least a large portion of the American 
people. Of this we may be sure, that the need of 
chastening was great, or our God, merciful and 
gracious, would not have laid on us His hand in 
such heavy strokes of His afflicting rod. Oh, may 
His own Holy Spirit teach us; then, from His judg- 
ments, we shall indeed learn righteousness 1 



THE INAUGURAL. 



AVe reproduce President Lincoln's second Inau- 
gural Address here, not because we suppose our 
readers will not have already seen it elsewhere, but 
because we wish to have it appear on our own files 
as a matter of record, and a matter too of testimony ; 
and that we may take opportunity to thank God 
that He has in His wise, loving favor to the nation, 
given to it a man as its chief officer, and that He 
has himself taught and led this earnest and simple- 
minded man till he does not fear, nor hesitate, even 
from such place, and on so high occasion, to utter the 
pure, the pious, the strong, the brave, yet tender 
words which fell there from his lips. It gives us a 
new confidence, a fresh impulse of hope and assur- 
ance for the American people, that its chief citizen 
has so had his vision clarified, so couched from the 
cataract of official blindness, so set open to the mean- 
ing and the purpose of God in his dealings with us, 
as to have uttered the sentence we have italicised. 
We are fain to recognize in this the lowly and 
penitent voice of the people, humbling itself with a 

(39) 



40 



genuine humility, before tliat mighty God, who is 
now scourging, but will, in due time, exalt us, if we 
honor Ilim. — Western Einscopalian. 

Fellow-Countrymen : — At this second appearing 
to take the oath of the presidential office, there is 
less occasion for an extended address than there was 
at the first. Then, a statement, somewhat in detail, 
of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. 
Now, at the expiration of four years, during which 
public declarations have been constantly called forth 
on every point and phase of the great contest which 
still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies 
of the nation, little that is new could be presented. 
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly 
depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; 
and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encour- 
aging to all. With high hope for the future, no pre- 
diction in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years 
ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an im- 
pending civil war. All dreaded it — all sought to 
avert it. While the inaugural address was being 
delivered from this place, devoted altogether to sav- 
iiKj the Union without war, insurgent agents were in 



41 

the city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking 
to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotia- 
tion. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them 
would mahe war rather than let the nation survive; 
and the other would accept war ratlier than let it 
perish. And the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but 
localized in the southern part of it. These slaves 
constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All 
knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of 
the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this 
interest was the object for which the insurgents 
would rend this Union, even by war; while the 
Government claimed no right to do more than to 
restrict territorial enlargement of it. Neither party 
expected for the war the magnitude or the duration 
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated 
that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or 
even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each 
looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fun- 
damental and astounding. Both read the same 
Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes 
His aid against the other. It may seem strange that 
any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance 



42 

ill wringing tlicir bread from the sweat of men's 
faces; but let us judge not, that w^e be not judged. 
The prayers of both could not be answered — that of 
neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has 
His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of 
offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; 
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." 
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of 
those offenses W'hich, in the providence of God, must 
needs come, but which, having continued through 
His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and 
that He gives to both North and South this terrible 
war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense 
came, shall ^ve discern therein any departure from 
those divine attributes which the believers in a living 
God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — 
fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of 
war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God lolUs ilmi 
it continue until all the wealth piled hy the hondman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited foil shall he 
sunk, ami until every drop of blood drawn icitlt the 
laih shall he 2^ciid hy another drawn icith the sword ; 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it nuist he 
said, " The jiidcjments of the Lord are true and right- 
eons al together. '' 



With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; 
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the 
right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; 
to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who 
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and 
his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish 
a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with 
all nations. 



'19 



I 



